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In many parts of South-East Asia, women's lifestyles are going through enormous changes as women move from traditional rural, agricultural lifestyles to modern, urban lifestyles, which often involve migration to cities, taking on paid work, and having a quite different relationship with their ...

In many parts of South-East Asia, women's lifestyles are going through enormous changes as women move from traditional rural, agricultural lifestyles to modern, urban lifestyles, which often involve migration to cities, taking on paid work, and having a quite different relationship with their families. This book, based on intensive research among the women of the Bidayuh people in Sarawak, all of them first generation migrant wage workers, explores the extent to which women's lifestyles are changing, and the reasons which prompt women to make the changes. How far are such women driven by economic considerations, how far by dissatisfaction with traditional lifestyles, and how far by the appeal of a glamorous urban lifestyle? The author's research includes detailed interviews in the field, and much of this interview material is included in the book, thereby enabling the Bidayuh women to tell their own stories as they grapple with the rapid changes swirling around them.

This book recounts the tale of Robert Burns, a grandson of the Bard, who sailed to Singapore in 1846 and worked as a trader in Singapore, Labuan and along the North-West coast of Borneo. He was a courageous, at times foolhardy young man, who was the first European to explore a major river system in ...

This book recounts the tale of Robert Burns, a grandson of the Bard, who sailed to Singapore in 1846 and worked as a trader in Singapore, Labuan and along the North-West coast of Borneo. He was a courageous, at times foolhardy young man, who was the first European to explore a major river system in the country that is now the East Malaysian State of Sarawak and which was then controlled by the Kayan, one of the fiercest tribes of head-hunters. Inevitably, Burns fell foul of James Brooke, the first white Raja of Sarawak and he lost his livelihood as an agent of a Scots-based firm in Singapore. Undaunted, Burns traded on his own account, but on his last voyage in the schooner Dolphin, he was murdered by pirates at sea, off the Northern tip of Borneo. Burns's death evoked a furore in Singapore, Scotland and the House of Commons, where Brooke was under continuous attack by the Radical Leader, Joseph Hume, a native of Montrose. The tortuous attempts to reveal the young man's true identity end with a newspaper report and the discovery of a letter from a hitherto unknown brother who practised as a 'surgeon' in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. In a century replete with accounts of great explorers, this is the extraordinary story of two very ordinary men from Scotland.